A Cooperation between Danses en l’R (Reunion) and The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative (South Africa), in the framework within the South-African­‐France season organized by the Institut Français.

Between an excessive urge to appear perfect and the auctioning of one’s own life, this opus oscillates between poetry, emotions and crude reality, while allowing the spectators to let their imagination float around freely and judge according to their own references and values.

Source : Lalanbik

Eric Languet admits that he has never been able to integrate a group, even though he accepts its codes and conventions. It’s probably this feeling of illegitimacy that nurtures his career as a dancer and choreographer since 30 years, questioning the margin, the a-normality, inviting to the ball those for who life wasn’t marked out (destinated) for dancing.

He did however integrate several groups, and not the least. After having discovered dance in Reunion Island, where he grew up, he studied at CNR de Rueil-Malmaison and took up a career as a ballet dancer.

A career that led him to the Opéra de Paris, and then to the Royal New-Zealand Ballet, where he was nominated principal dancer and resident choreographer. Even if he respects the hierarchy of merit, on the other hand he doesn’t appreciate the idea of conforming himself to the label that his status as a principal dancer imposed.

His aesthetic choice and choreographic issue will be strongly influenced by the work of Jiri Kylian, William Forsythe and Douglas Wright. As a dancer for the Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre, he experiments real-time composition with Mark Tompkins and an approach to physical theatre with Zéro Théâtre. He opened the way for the Compagnie Danses en l’R, that he founded in 1998 in Reunion Island : the one of a human dance in society, staging the individual and his difficulties, through their most simple aspect, the gesture.

His conception of beauty and his work method will continue to evolve thanks to two essential encounters : with Lloyd Newson, under whose direction he works in the DV8 Physical Theatre for the creation of «The Cost of Living » in 2000, and with David Toole, incredible dancer, born without legs, with whom he tours in Europe for the rerun of this creation. According to Eric Languet, beauty has no longer to do with the aesthetic of the body. It is elsewhere, inside the vulnerability, cracks, subtleties and ambiguity of the relation towards the other.

He was trained by Adam Benjamin, co-founder of the Candoco Dance Company, to physically integrated dance and directs since 2004 workshops in connection with several institutions and hospitals of Reunion Island, ELEC «Espace Libre Et Change» mingling disabled and non-disabled dancers. He involved Wilson Payet in his company, a dancer in wheelchair, trained within the framework of these workshops, who performs in two of his pieces «Attention fragile» and «Fragments d’un discours lumineux», in which Eric Languet dances as well. 

The choreographer has never stopped dancing and feeds his creations with his experience as a performer. The piece «In a world full of butterflies, it takes balls to be a caterpillar, some thoughts of falling...» which he performed with Robyn Orlin in 2013, certainly reinforced his choreographic view, between physical theatre, performance and the power of dance to transcend.

Source : Danses en l’R’s website

More information : http://www.danses-en-l-r.com/